Critical Review by W. M. Hagen

In the following review, Hagen lauds Shields's “realistic focus” on her characters's lives in Unless, maintaining that Shields “is one of our best” contemporary writers.

Somewhere in the middle of her life [in Unless], Reta Winters is on tour in Washington, D.C., to promote her first novel. Bookstore signings are over, she has an afternoon free, so she visits no less than twenty boutiques in search of the perfect scarf for Norah, her oldest daughter. It will be a birthday gift for the very daughter who, unaccountably, will drop out of college and end up begging on a street corner. Strangely, the episode marks Reta's first encounter with shopping passion. She shares...